The boundary between crypto and fiat money is becoming more permeable

FINANCE HAS its squabbling tribes, much like the rest of society. A contest that attracts a lot of attention just now is the demographic-cum-digital divide between crypto kids and fiat dinosaurs. The crypto kids believe that blockchain-based finance is the future and a haven from the inevitable degradation of fiat money. In the opposite corner are the titanosaurs of the fiat world, the central bankers. “I’m sceptical about crypto assets, frankly, because they are dangerous,” said Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England’s boss, this week.This is a good moment for the dinosaurs. The dollar price of bitcoin, the mainstay of crypto assets, fell from $58,000 or so in mid-May to around $33,000 in the space of a couple of weeks. The steepest part of that decline came after Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said his firm would suspend its policy of accepting bitcoin for purchases of its cars. A pledge by Chinese regulators to crack down on the mining of bitcoin gave the sell-off additional impetus.